Also can we please put a stop to the +1's? Thanks.

@y2k
I still owe OB 46 likes so I'm afraid I can't help you there.

@Maniac - Here's an alternate interpretation of your reaction experiment. I saw your post at the top of p5, thought "oh god, backwards is the new haiku". I knew nobody else had attempted to claim, so I did a quick search for your posts to see if you had ever made a claim, and saw that you hadn't made any previous posts. I then came to the conclusion that you meant to fakeclaim and had failed to post it for some reason, and dismissed your post as useless to me.

@bo - At EOD I want my vote to mean something, so I'll probably move to a major wagon if I'm not already on one. But until then, I do want my vote on someone who isn't contributing. If you want to policy lynch, I'd be behind that.

@ghug … let him figure things out today. It will be plainly obvious if he gets coached (or told to shut up) over the coming days. Unlike in past cases with goldfinger and Lucland, we simply have to actually pay attention to that rather than letting them slip by time and time again. The vigilante can help with that if we aren't doing our part.

@SS … I'm completely down for D1 policy as long as it gives us information as well. Unless, like last game, we are sniffing out scum easily from the outset, we shouldn't be taking out a contributor even if that contribution is convoluted and falsified. We'll be able to see that more clearly later.

@y2k … are you changing your play style? You seem to be more active but more sporadic (maybe spontaneous is a better word) than in past games I've played with you.

@Balki … fair enough. I just don't understand how you are so willing to encourage people to be efficient with their words and then come back and make some hard reads (two town reads) while using such vague and inefficient language. It seems to me like you are intentionally evading specifics while trying to post enough content to make it look like you are posting specifics.

@Yoyo … since you're evidently online and watching the game, care to do something useful? Question someone, throw some heat, do something…

@Toemato ... have you read any of our past mafia threads closely or just skimmed them?

bosox, i'm not trying to be any different than i was in MX

You told us in the god QT after M8-ish that you thought lurking was a very viable strategy and that you would absolutely take advantage of it if you were mafia. I wish I had the exact text. Do you still believe that?

yes, mafia like to lurk, especially when they have heat on them. that's what i did in M8. DO seemingly shying away from the game after she got some heat is pretty damning.

Then what do you think of a policy? A policy isn't just thoughtlessly throwing a vote on a non-contributor, it's putting it on the best bet out of the non-contributors.

bo how about you let me do something instead of the empty pressure of telling me to do something, then when I do something, claim that I only do things when you call me out?

i don't think a policy implying that a non-contributor should be lynched is helpful, quite the contrary. let scum lurk if they really want, it's ultimately a failing strategy and it's very hard for lurky scum to come back in and look like town. the circumstances surrounding each individual lurker is different and should be analyzed separately, not lumped into a policy lynch scenario and letting people avoid giving direct reasons for their votes.

@Maniac
It's too late. I've already wept and now my heart is hardened.
Also, I didn't quite get your reaction experiment either. I assumed when you were looking for counterclaims that you were referring to your JOAT claim in the Sign-Up thread, so I thought it was a lame joke post and I ignored it. Perhaps you came up with this little plan and got ahead of yourself. What exactly were you claiming Maniac?

@Yoyo ... works for me. Just realize that I'm gonna call you out now for being super reactive rather than, you know, doing something. Basically, I'm gonna call you out for just about anything. Some of it will matter, some of it won't. Sorry in advance.

@y2k ... of course not, but my point is that a policy isn't inherently targeting town, it's targeting non-contributors. It's not suggesting that we should simply kill someone off because of circumstances; rather, we should take out someone that, if they are town, are not doing anything to help town and won't do anything to help town later, and simultaneously, if they are scum, would otherwise slip between the cracks, just as captainmeme likely would have last game had the cop not caught him as Yoyo pointed out earlier. When we make scum make bold moves like we did then, we can catch them, but if we don't force them to play, we might catch some of them, but we are gonna have a lot of trouble catching all of them, especially with an encryptor that can let them coach each other along during the day, making it much more difficult to spot, and a godfather avoiding our detections. We have to force them out on our own.

I agree that we shouldn't lump them all together, though. There's still reading and investigating to be done.

@bo
I disagree with y2k, lynching non-contributors scares everyone into talking more. Mafia don't slip up by not talking, but by talking and leaving trails to follow.

Our biggest cancer are the townies that think they are doing the town a favor by not talking, because the mafia can hide among them. It's actually quite selfish. We won't be able to lynch them later on, especially if we don't catch scum early.

People could make the argument that we could let the vig kill the lurkers, but why would we do that? The vig is an opportunity for a 100% town led kill so they should be killing for scum. I think that policy lynching lurkers makes the vig's job easier, as they don't have to worry about whether or not there are scum among the lurkers.

so you guys want to policy-lynch one of captain/espi/guak/HR/OB?

those are the stand-out lurkers to me when i look at the player list

how do you pick among lurkers that have said hardly anything? aren't we almost guaranteed to have mafia influence cause us to target one of the town lurkers?

@Balki "Bo says: “why are you reminding whoever claims at the end of the day not to claim a specific role? It seems fairly obvious. I think PRs know that.”

ANSWER: It may be obvious. I’ve never seen a “PR” claim in the two games I’ve played here and the one game I’ve read. I found it to be worth mentioning in this game, where I think it’s important that we safeguard our PRs carefully in the early days."

A claim to be PR is a good thing compared to a specific role claim in some ways. It is best for the town if we know not a lynch someone who is a PR without giving the mafia too much information.

The problem with a general PR claim is that it is incontestable, meaning that mafia can use general PR claims to avoid being lynched and nobody can counterclaim them. As such we should treat generic PR claims with suspicion. Because while they are good for the town, they are even better for mafia.

I think I agree with bo regarding lynching non-contributors. The mafia are likely going to be killing off townies who are doing a good job at scum-hunting and organizing the town. Or people they suspect are power roles. If the town removes low-activity posters we can avoid a situation where all that remains at the end of the game are posters who have little posting activity, this is a good thing because generally more posts=more solid read.

Additionally, I think Yo might be right about the Vig, while the Vigilantes decision may be unilateral it is at least relatively free of mafia influence. Why waste it trying to take out lurkers.

If we are going to policy lynch someone the most important part will be deciding who. The problem here is that if some mafia are lurking the vote is likely to be steered away from them.

Perhaps we could select a player randomly, put pressure on them, if they being contributing move onto another random player, and look for attempts to pre-emptively steer the pressure onto another lurker. I'm not satisfied with this idea, but it would be functional if anyone has a better idea I'm all ears

M13 Day 1 Vote Count 1
Balki Bartokomous (1): y2kjbk
captainmeme (1): Yoyoyozo
DemonOverlord (1): wjessop
ghug (1): Toemato
Toemato (1): ghug
wjessop (2): DemonOverlord, SaladinSmith
Yoyoyozo (1): guak

Unvoted (2): DeathLlama9, damian

No vote (8): Hellenic Riot, ND, OB_Gyn_Kenobi, Balki Bartokomous, bo_sox48, captainmeme, Maniac, Espi, uclabb

Currently wjessop is set to be lynched.

There is 1 day, 4 hours, and 31 minutes remaining.

All players must post at least twice and cast at least one vote before the end of Day 1. This applies to the 8 "no vote" people as of now.

well I mean it's only marginally worse than a normal lynch, as the mafia influence the vote regardless of who is up for lynch. It actually may be in our favor if this were to happen. It's how we caught the scum team last game. They protected TrPrado D1 and it came back to bite them when he was lynched the next day.

^@y2k

So far I think HR hasn't posted at all, and OB_gyn has only posted once.
Either of them would be a decent first target for pressure.

I'll take a second look at meme, guak and espi. I seem to recall more activity from them.

With that said, even if we are putting pressure on lurkers, until those lurkers show up it is more productive to talk about active players and what they've posted.

Additional thought.
Y2k's argument is weak and I understand why Balki is criticizing it, however his position on Balki makes sense. At the time Balki has posted all of twice, long posts yes, but infrequent.

Balki has proven more active since then, whereas when y2k made the accusation it looked like Balki might just post a big and useful entrance post and then ride that wave of town karma while lurking. Given that he has since proven more active I'm not sure that y2k's case holds anymore.

@yoyo, i don't follow what you're trying to say in your last post. what would be in our favor?

@damian, has balki proven more active? he worked to defend himself from me, and i wasn't swayed but i was willing to accept his defense for the immediate. all we've seen from balki since is a slew of questions hurled at toemato in one post. balki isn't giving reads or concrete thoughts, he's just positing open-ended possiblities and highlighting who he wants to hear more from. he's explicitly hiding his thoughts from town, while actively trying to look like he isn't. he's not posing questions to further his reads. i can't tell what balki thinks of players by reading his posts, and that's a major scumsign that, if balki is town, i expect him to fix ASAP.

Took a second look. Guam and Meme definitely deserve to be on the list of lurkers.

I'd be inclined to pass on espi, as he did get people started on commenting on Balki's points and did produce the town list to clear up the confusion re TrPrado. Neither are big contributions, and it would be good if he started posting more useful material.

Especially given that he was one of the most active players early on in terms of number of posts he didn't produce much in the way of actual content. He just doesn't meet my definition of a lurker. Since he has done something of value for the town.

@y2k
If mafia were to attempt to steer the vote, it would be in our favor because looking at voting behavior later down the line will show this.

@y2k,
Rereading his posts I see what you are saying. He hasn't provided much in the way of thoughts on the guilt of innocence of people.

He did follow up on replies to peoples answers to his suggestions though, which I would argue is useful.

With that said, yes it would be good to hear some concrete thoughts from him on who he suspects.

On that note, I'm mildly scum reading both Wjessop (still) and Toemato. Both were very reactive when pressed and immediately voted for those who were pressuring them. Often this scum behaviour.

I don't really have a solid read on anyone else.

I'll post more shortly -- but damian your post here is a Catch 22:

"scum reading both Wjessop (still) and Toemato. Both were very reactive when pressed and immediately voted"

I would not describe my posts to you as "very reactive" -- I simply defended myself against what I deemed to be a poor, lazy scum read on me, and answered your questions.

If I answer your questions and defend myself that makes me scum -- and if I don't answer your questions and evade a read I'm scum?

Next you'll say it's not that I defended myself but the "way" I defended myself -- but bollocks to that, I defended myself quite rationally and reasonably.

You were critcising me for making joke posts in the first hour of the game, and as that's all you have on me, I think you need to get a grip and move on.

Balki's refusal to officially state and rationalize his read on DO is the biggest red flag at the moment concerning him. looking forward to how that develops. answering questions meant to defend yourself isn't town or scum indicative.

i get what you're saying yoyo. but naturally i feel quite hesitant to just throw my vote on a policy lynch of a lurker like guak/captain/OB, compared with voting for an actual scum-read. banking on scum leading the vote now and catching them later for it sounds incredibly risky.

@damian: "I don't really have a solid read on anyone else."

You don't have a "solid read" on anyone.

I'm dismayed that you're seemingly intentionally trying to rush town into "solid" reads when we've had less than 24 hours and 6 pages of game play.